all we need is love, vol. 1

Love is patient. Love is kind,

As a child, I learn that God is love. I am raised as a good Christian girl, attending Sunday School every week, and later, a Presbyterian school. Our thrice-a-week morning assemblies each start with a Bible reading, and it is 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14, Verses 4 to 7 that we default to for the last one of each term,

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud,

A decade ago, now: I’m in my final year of high school when I step into a church service for the last time. I simply come to the acceptance, one day, that love, and faith, and God, is a feeling of the heart — a belief that cannot simply be rationalised, demanded, eked out through logic or fear. I admit to myself that my familiarity with scripture reflects only my eagerness to please the adults who have nurtured me; I have little conviction of my own. And while I maintain a deep respect for the community that raised me, that anchored my parents as new immigrants in lands so foreign to them — I begin to question the lessons which it drummed into me, about right versus wrong; rightful and wrongful love; rightful and wrongful expressions of love,

It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs,

I start to wonder if that which I have been taught to understand as love might simply be care, or respect — and what the difference might be. As I grow up, and the scope of my life-world balloons to encompass new engagements, new forms of relationship,

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth,

I come to be troubled by the very concept of rightful and wrongful love (a dichotomy that has been leveraged and enforced by institutions that, of course, have enacted unspeakable violence upon children, unwed mothers and queer communities). I rethink hierarchical typologies of love; love as obligatory and ascribing obligations; love as a taken-for-granted thing, handed down, exchanged,

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

If Internet memes are to be taken as fact, Asian parents have only one way of expressing love. In lieu of goodbye kisses and cuddles, they offer bowls of neatly cubed fruits. In lieu of “how are yous”, 妈妈 adapts her cooking to accommodate my pescetarian diet; 爸爸 heads to the market to buy a dozen fresh scallops. Keeping me fed,

Driving me to school every morning for a good ten years, nagging me about the risk of mouldy bathrooms (as though the current rental market offers a raft of alternatives), asking intrusive questions and sizing up my life partner,

This is a love anchored upon the bottom rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, underpinned by sacrifice rather than affection — rooted in the physiological, rather than emotional. After all, 妈妈 and 爸爸 learned to parent from their own parents: a generation which reached adulthood during, and fought to survive through, Cultural Revolutions and strictures of poverty. Parental love, in that context, would have entailed limited choices under rigid constraints,

such that parental love, in this context, manifests as a determination to expand those bounds. I suppose that is why our first-generation, immigrant parents are always doing the sums, calculating the stars, working out how best to increase the odds of success for their children. They nurture us with a love that is both inherited from past generations, and oriented towards those of the future,

They must shore up our good fortune to date, and invest in the wellbeing of a dynasty.

Inevitably, in the midst of their anxieties about hypothetical threats that are yet to (and may never) materialise, for descendants that are currently unborn — sometimes our needs, in the here-and-now, become secondary.

In February 2024, I take up a teaching fellowship — partly to round out my academic experience, partly because I need the financial buffer, and partly so that I can pass on the precious gift of education. It is an indulgent fantasy that drives me: first-year students stamping their feet on tables, oh captain, my captain, as though I am Mr Keating (ha!). I assume the role with a vision of pliable young minds, whose knowledge and curiosity — or at least, job-ready skills! — I will be able to nurture.

Idealistic. I learn that, as a tutor, I am also soft, and forgiving. I commit to democratising the academy, to holding space for different forms of engagement in the classroom, to destabilising the colonial, classist foundations of university education. I facilitate multiple entry points to the subject matter, for students who are no doubt grappling with myriad, institutionally and structurally rooted barriers to their participation. The kids aren’t all right, and I am teaching a course on social inequalities, so it seems only right to model accessibility and inclusion in radical ways. Thus, I am generous,

with deadlines, assessment criteria, rules of engagement. I learn every student’s name, and attempt to find out their interests, so that I can mould our lessons to them. I play with language, rejecting the accentism that too often creeps into tutorial discussions. I provide more feedback than I am paid to, in the hopes that early guidance will pay dividends. Love becomes the foundation of my pedagogical approach,

à la bell hooks. For hooks, education cannot be liberatory (and it should be liberatory) without love, without eros: passion, desire for transformation, the impulse that propels us to fulfil our potential. Education can only free us if we flood spaces of learning with relationality, and embrace joy and pleasure as part of the process. Education offers self-actualisation when it is underpinned by community, and humility, and reflexivity.

It is this spirit that I attempt to offer. And yet,

all I receive from students, in response, is doubt; constant second-guessing of my micro-decisions during and after each class. They are immovable: lectures go unwatched, readings at least unread if not altogether unopened. There is nothing inherently wrong with a break in discussion (active thinking is learning), so every week, I choose to let silences linger — only to be forced to fill them. I go to every length to establish a learning environment that invites students to contribute in any way that feels useful to them,

because I do not want it to be my fault — to have reinforced an intellectual atmosphere welcoming only to certain kinds of learners, in which nobody dares to speak . I cannot admit to myself that the issue may be that they simply do not care to.

To be clear, I am cognisant that I cannot expect students to be as severe and bookish and timid and hungry for academic validation as I have always been. As teaching fellows, we are told by our lecturers to adjust our expectations: PhD candidates are reliably the harshest markers, they warn us. And yet,

I find myself dejected after every tutorial and every assessment. I forget hooks’ other lessons: that liberatory pedagogy also means the courage to be disliked by students,

that stripping away fear as part of evaluation processes, and rejecting norms of power and decorum in our conversations, is a shared accountability. To be in relationship, and foster a learning community, requires mutuality. Without this, all we have is unrequited love.

I decide not to seek another teaching role, after my year-long contract ends, because I am wary of becoming resentful of students altogether, and extinguishing any remaining faith I have in education as freedom. I call it quits whilst accepting that it is not I who has failed, but the academy — cash-strapped; strangled by neoliberal interests in human capital development rather than intellectual exploration; measured only against business logics and quantitative targets; characterised by workforce precarity and short-termism. Today’s universities simply do not enable us to teach in the way that learners need.

If you’ve not heard of the concept of the five love languages, let me direct you to an If Books Could Kill podcast episode, by Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri. The framework is admittedly trite, conceptually dubious, and a hilarious rationalisation of gendered norms (Arlie Hochschild would like a word!). Yet, there is value in recognising that we have different needs and preferences in terms of how we reassure and feel reassured in our relationships with each other. For instance,

love, for me, is carving out time to weave a cocoon together,

a soft, protective space for winding, unkempt conversations. These are moments in which I feel welcome to discuss the weather, and yet equally, can decide to strip emotionally naked, if need be. In a world that sometimes rejects, or has little time for, vulnerability, or candour — I feel most safe and held and seen by others when we are equally invested in creating those opportunities for each other. Au contraire,

tokens of affection hold little weight (the social conventions that dictate when presents should be offered and received have sullied those waters), and my discomforts in my own bodily existence mean I would rather not greet you with a hug unless we are really very close friends, please. Your attention, your time, your honesty, is far more significant.

Dr Chapman’s simplistic little framework has also helped me to recognise that I am indeed loved as a daughter, a sister — and moreover, that this is not untrue simply because I have not been able to rely upon family to satisfy my emotional needs. Just because they do not ask me what is keeping me up at night does not mean they do not care. It only means that their care is not expressed through questions, conversations; that what they speak is a different language to mine. That is (has to be) okay.

Compulsory (hetero)sexuality dictates that we should revere love, romantic form of love, as sacred — to be elevated above every other kind of relationship. We are near-universally encouraged to believe in this as a desire that is essential to what it means to be human: without a soulmate, an “other-half”, you are incomplete. And whilst I eschew this principle, it would be remiss of me to write about love without honouring the joy that is having a partner-in-life-and-crime.

Hollywood rom-coms did not prepare me, in the slightest, for the experience of being so unreservedly accepted, cared for and supported. I’m referring, in equal parts, to all the material compromises that our shared life has entailed; his gestures of affection, ranging from sweet to patently absurd; and the incredibly dull, yet utterly comforting undercurrent of our everyday. Where I have been taught to expect fresh bouquets, we have built sets of Lego flowers together, in ratty pyjamas. It is that process, of quietly piecing ourselves into a home and a family, that I did not know to yearn for.

It is not easy; is that okay to admit? I am characteristically neurotic about us, just as I thrum with anxiety for all other things. I audit us for signs of weakness and opportunities for growth. I scan myself for my own flaws and limitations, in case they one day erode my capacity to be loved. I am conscientious, on guard, for threats — lest I fall victim to fairytale naiveté. And I feel safe to confess all this, because he,

in spite of my (baseless!) fears, has never responded to my paranoia with judgement. In fact, whenever I have worried myself to exhaustion, he is my best and favourite place to rest.

1  Words of affirmation, though, can be helpful. In fact, if you’ve made it to this little note, could you let me know via email reply? Bonus points if you can share your favourite line from this update. I’m still working out how beehiiv is working out for me — and for you!